Rats, mould, damp: UK’s biggest student homes provider faces legal action over poor accommodation

Students across the country are demanding rent refunds from the UK’s biggest university hall owner, claiming they have endured infestations of rats, mice and bed bugs, and had their health affected by mould and damp.

Flat Justice, a not-for-profit tenants’ rights group, has shared details with the Observer of group legal actions it is leading against Unite Students on behalf of hundreds of students who have lived in the company’s halls in Liverpool, London, Coventry and Birmingham.

Unite owns and manages rooms for 68,000 students in 151 purpose-built blocks across 23 university towns and cities. It said this weekend that the welfare of students was “always our top priority” and it had invested £90m in the past year to upgrade accommodation and services.

A tribunal is reviewing cases from 346 dissatisfied students who lived in 10 Unite blocks in Liverpool in 2022-23. Rats and mice have been a particular feature of complaints at their Atlantic Point hall in the city.

Student Chakotay Williams, who submitted a complaint about his second-year flat there, said there were rats outside, and indoors they had a problem with mice. After the residents complained, the maintenance team put poison in the kitchen but he alleges the mice remained.

Another former tenant of this block, who asked to be known only as Tom, claimed he began having breathing problems after moving in. “There was mould everywhere and the place was perpetually damp,” he said. He spent hours removing silverfish, “only for them to be back in the same numbers the next day”.

Flat Justice is also investigating complaints at nine Unite blocks in Birmingham. One student who lived at Mary Sturge residence in 2023-24, who asked not to be named, said she complained after three separate sightings of a rat in their kitchen, but alleged it took months for someone to deal with the problem.

“They said maybe one of my flatmates was secretly keeping a hamster,” the student said.

Niamh Reynolds, a student of fashion history at Central St Martins in London, lived at Emily Bowes Court, Haringey, which is owned by Unite, in 2021. She said she did not know, when she signed up to live there, that year-long re-cladding work was planned, but that shortly before the start of term, Unite sent her and other residents a notice of works which warned there would be scaffolding.

Reynolds said: “My flatmate’s window was completely covered [with scaffolding and tarpaulin] and they had no daylight, which had a big impact on their mental health. I had light but I had to keep my blinds shut for privacy because there were people walking around on the scaffolding.”

By the summer, she said dust from the work had become “really bad”. A problem with the central heating meant her flat was “boiling all the time”. She says she has a mould allergy, and alleges mould in her room was causing her to wheeze and be sick.

“Maintenance did not take the issue seriously, and it was not treated properly,” she said. “I feel let down.”

Flat Justice is fighting for rent refunds for 113 students across three Unite halls in Haringey, including Emily Bowes Court. Lack of notification about the building work when students signed up is the top complaint. One student’s tenancy agreement, seen by the Observer , warned that it would be happening but named a different hall, Blithehale Court.

Other complaints at Emily Bowes included “unbearable heat” from broken radiators, an infestation of bed bugs, lifts broken for weeks, and students arriving to find an uncleaned flat piled with rubbish and a dirty fridge full of rotting food.

A spokesperson for Unite said that teams were constantly available to deal with such problems, adding: “While we acknowledge issues may arise, our teams always work hard to resolve these as quickly as possible.”

Guy Morris, director of Flat Justice, told the Observer : “Unite portrays a shiny image to its prospective customers through their marketing … but the reality is often very different.”

Morris said many students complained of infestations – of maggots, flies, silverfish, bed bugs or rodents.

Shortages of student accommodation have been a problem across the UK in recent years. With students in cities including Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh reporting desperate struggles to find somewhere to live, and some freshers who accepted places in clearing finding themselves housed in towns miles away, Morris said that students were under pressure to accept whatever they were given.

Related: Have laptop, can travel: the rise and rise of the commuter student

Flat Justice found that many Unite properties were not signed up to local authority rental licensing schemes, designed to ensure that basic safety standards are met. Recent tribunals found that Unite should have licensed properties in Liverpool, Oxford, Coventry and Haringey. Unite has now done this.

Unite said it was confident it met the standards required by licences, but not all of its properties required them due to exemptions.

A spokesperson for Unite said: “While not all of our 151 properties require these types of licences, once we were aware of missing licences we undertook a full audit and made all the applications needed to the relevant local authorities. New licensing schemes continue to be introduced by local authorities and we’ve implemented new procedures to ensure licensing compliance going forwards.”